Autopsy Shows that Deceased Fox NFL Robot Had Concussion Disease
R.I.P. Cleatus, another fallen soldier in the NFL’s mental health war
Cleatus, the recently deceased robot mascot for Fox NFL Sunday, was suffering from from the concussion-related, degenerative brain disease chronic traumatic encephalopathy when he took his own life late last year. Dr. Wilson Anderson, who performed the autopsy that confirmed the CTE diagnosis, said, “I honestly didn’t even know what to expect. I wasn’t sure if Cleatus, being a robot, would even have a brain. But sure enough, he did and it showed the same signs of CTE consistent with other former football players.”
Dr. Anderson conjectured that Cleatus’s CTE likely resulted from the countless blows to the head that he suffered in the course of his performances on Fox NFL Sunday, which often involved him playing football against other animated robots and fighting CGI characters in promotional animations. Anderson estimated that Cleatus may have suffered from dozens of undiagnosed concussions during his decade on Fox. Network assistants consistently failed to report the occasions on which extended bodily stress sent sparks flying from his cranium, instead welding those wounds so to cover things up.
Cleatus’s wife, Jeanne, was dismayed to learn that his death may have come as the direct result of the job that, until recently, he performed with devotion and aplomb. She recounted, “He loved that job. He loved entertaining. He loved the violence. [sobbing] He loved interacting with the brands.” But the CTE diagnosis explains the behavioral changes she and her 16-year-old son, Alfie, had noticed in Cleatus in the months leading up to his death.
According to his wife, Cleatus had always been a fairly happy robot until he began complaining of frequent headaches last year. Shortly thereafter, Cleatus experienced tremors, mood swings, and episodes of confusion and paranoia. His entire character changed, as he began abusing prescription drugs, alcohol, and malware. According to Alfie, he was like a completely different robot: “He wasn’t my dad any more. Not the dad I’d always known, at least. He’d drink and take pills, and put mysterious drives into his USB ports, and just scare the hell out of us. Back in April, he disappeared for two weeks and came back with a broken nose and a bunch of guns. I didn’t know what to do whenever he’d go after my mom.”
The police were called to their home several times to respond to domestic violence complaints. Cleatus was fired by Fox during the preseason after an incident on set where, drunk and disoriented, he attacked a production assistant. Fearing for the safety of her son and herself, Jeanne kicked Cleatus out of the house. He moved in with his friend Digger, an animated gopher that Fox occasionally used on their NASCAR telecasts.
It was Digger who found Cleatus’ body on the day after Thanksgiving. Although there was no suicide note, a long, rambling, distraught voicemail that he left his son on the holiday made his intentions clear. Alfie regrets not answering the call or calling his father back before he ended his life: “I thought he was just doing more of the same stuff he’d been doing for months: making threats, trying to manipulate us, you know.”
Police determined that Cleatus died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the chest, similar to former NFL players and CTE sufferers Dave Duerson and Junior Seau. In fact, it was this method of suicide that first tipped off Jeanne to the possibility of a CTE diagnosis: “I’d seen that Will Smith movie [Concussion, released in 2015]. Once they told me that was how he did it, I just knew it. I told them to do an autopsy.”
Jeanne said that the CTE diagnosis has actually given her some comfort: “At first I thought it was my fault. I thought I must have been doing something wrong to make him act that way. That I’d maybe forgotten to defrag him correctly. It was so hard to see him like that and to force him to leave. But now I know it was the concussions, that it was football, that it was Fox and the NFL. They did this to him. They did this to my husband, to my son’s father. And they knew they were doing it.”
Alfie shares neither his mother’s anger at the network and NFL nor her perverse sense of closure due to the diagnosis. Instead, he blames himself: “I should have answered his call [on Thanksgiving]. I think about that every day. I wish I had seen that it was a cry for help. I wish I hadn’t just let my father die.”
Representatives from Fox and the NFL did not respond to our request for comment.
